This invention relates generally to capturing stereoscopic images for three dimensional display.
The human eyes are essentially stereoscopic image collectors. Because the left and right eyes are spaced apart, they each capture information from which information about the depth of an object being viewed can be determined. With depth information the human eye can view objects in three dimensions. The eye judges how objects relate to one another spatially when viewed from different positions.
Manmade systems may use similar principles to record stereoscopic image pairs. For example, a pair of image sensors may be spaced apart from one another sufficiently so that each sensor records an image from a different position. The recorded images may be digitally captured, for example in a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) imaging array. Those captured images may then be arranged for stereoscopic viewing. Techniques for stereoscopic viewing may involve using left and right filters to reconstruct the depth dimension recorded via the stereoscopic image pairs. The image information may be reconstructed using left and right color filters which decode left and right color coding from the composite stereoscopic image. Alternatively, left and right polarizers may do the same thing by decoding encoded polarization information to separate the left and right stereoscopic pairs from a composite image.
Conventional systems use two sensors, one for capturing the left image and another for capturing the right image, to create a three dimensional composite image. Using two sensors may result in increased cost and increased electronic processing of the captured images. The information from the two sensors is generally separately processed for subsequent recombination and stereoscopic viewing. Moreover, because of the separation between the two image sensors, the compactness of the resulting sensing system suffers.
Thus, there is a continuing need for better devices and techniques for stereoscopic image sensing.